Not long after unveiling its Surface tablet, Microsoft delivered a keynote at TechEd Europe in Amsterdam where it forecasted that tablets will outsell PCs in 2013. The company also attempted to prove that it did not forget about laptop and desktop users, but unfortunately, a feisty demo laptop afforded them yet another blue-screen-alike moment.

Speaking at the keynote, Microsoft's VP fow Windows Web Services Antoine Leblond said that desktop PC sales will fall behind those of tablets. Of course, he did not miss the chance to explain just how great Metro interface is for tablets.

He pointed out however that touch technology is coming to PCs as well, which will ultimately change the way user interfaces are designed, much like the mouse did. Indeed, some may recall that the arrival of mouse meant the start of actual aiming in first person shooters, and there is no reason why touch shouldn't pull off a similar feat.

The company stressed that this does not mean it will turn its back on laptop and desktop users. Leblond underlined that Metro works equally well on desktops and tablets. Unfortunately, proving this turned out to be a bit difficult as the demo laptop repeatedly refused to recognize gestures. Meh, we'll just take Microsoft's word for it.

A data centre company has worked out a way to use the fact that a lot of Holland is technically under sea level and periodically requires small boys to save the country by sticking their hands in dykes.

Aelecity Group is using innovative technology in its new Amsterdam data centre, Southeast AMS 5. The site will utilize one of the largest installations of an Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) system which will significantly improve the efficiency of the facility's cooling capabilities, and contribute to the data centre's industry-leading environmental performance.

ATES is a thermal technology which utilizes the naturally stored groundwater found in Amsterdam. The system works in harmony with the seasons by storing water in underground wells which is warmed by waste heat from the data centre in the summer and cooled by the lower external temperatures in the winter.

The cool water is stored in the ground and is then used in summer as a part of the cooling process. Alexandra Schless, Managing Director, TelecityGroup Netherlands said that while ATES systems are used widely across the Netherlands, the technology has never been rolled out before on such a large data centre project.

Diffie is the VP of information security and cryptography at ICANN, who laid the foundation for the public key infrastructure which now helps secure the Internet. Diffie said that good guys can't exist without bad guys and the comment explains the rise of cybercriminals and groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec.

He said that one of the most important things for good cryptography and security in the age of the Internet is good code. Unfortunately, really good code is generally too expensive to write. He said that humanity is moving into a software age as we moved into an iron age.

This means that there needs to be a good plan to secure software. To do that a developer needs to know exactly what the purpose is of the application is going to be to make it more secure. They need to write good code when some of the current programming languages are vastly inaccurate. Some languages actually encourage buffer overflows, Diffie said.

Writing code is almost always a trade off. While in the 1970s it was thought possible to get full formal proof of the code, achieving that is not a realistic scenario, because of the cost involved. He said that all good code is expensive and more money should be spend on writing really good code so applications can become secure, he said.

Browser sandboxes are created to confine code but people need to realise that way of working is inadequate for a lot of applications.